Adventures in Teaching Kids How to Code

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Month: January 2013

We’re really excited to announce that we are part of a joint project between Google and Raspberry Pi. In the next month Google will deliver over 15,000 Raspberry Pi computers and divide them between five strategic partners and we are very excited to be one of those partners.

We’ll have over 3000 Raspberry Pi computers to distribute throughout our network of Code Clubs!

We’ll be giving some to each of the current clubs and some to the next clubs that sign up (and need them) until they are all gone. Once the Raspberry Pis are in the schools our volunteers will then make sure that after a while they go to the children in the club that will get the most use from them.

We’ll post details about how current clubs can claim their Raspberry Pis very soon but in the meantime keep going with Scratch and start collecting the peripherals you’ll need.

So here’s what to do next:

SCHOOLS
If having hardware to programme on is a problem for your school and you want to start a Code Club then you can make sure you find a volunteer as soon as possible by following the steps on this page http://www.codeclub.org.uk/getting-started/schools.

A new wave of Code Clubs has started this term and we’ve been seeing a lot of volunteers have been blogging about their experiences in running their club. Here’s a list of links of blog posts for those who want to know what it’ll be like.

When a Code Club is formed we ask the volunteer to complete a short survey for us in the first session so we can find out a bit about the club. So far 150 Code Clubs responded, out of 393 registered clubs. That’s a 38% response rate, which is excellent for surveys.

Those 150 clubs had 2,233 children. If we extrapolate this across all 393 Code Clubs, we get just over 5,800 children in Code Clubs across the country.

The clubs come in all sizes, with most clubs having 10-20 members. There are a few smaller ones, and a few clubs with over 45 people! We assume that these are in-class initiatives where Code Club is incorporated into normal lessons.

The gender split is amazing, too: 40% of Code Clubbers are girls, with 60% boys.

This is an amazing uptake in girls, especially as computing-related undergraduate programmes typically attract about 12% women. All this was done without any mention of gender in any of the Code Club materials. Let’s hope that the gender split continues to be at least this good in future.

Less than a quarter of the Code Clubbers have done any programming before, with most of them (one in five of the total) having some experience with Scratch.

Extrapolating that out over all 393 Code Clubs, that means some 4,500 children have had their first taste of programming, thanks to you.

At the end of term one (end of the autumn term 2012) we asked all our Code Clubs to tell us how they had been getting on via another survey. These surveys are very important for us, as they allow us to see what’s working and what’s not. The end-of-term survey has already pointed out a few things we could do better, and we haven’t yet fully analysed the results. We can also use the results of the surveys to show potential sponsors and other funders how widespread and successful Code Club is, and how much of an impact it’s having.

We’ve not analysed the end-of-term survey yet, but from our first look things seem to have gone really well. I’d like to share a couple of quotes from the survey.

“The pupils enjoyed the project and were keen to keep working when I wanted to go home!”

“We have had a fantastic response from all pupils in the club and already have a reserve list for when we repeat the club next term.”

“A couple of pupils that are known to be quite disengaged from regular maths and science in school have flourished in Code Club, and taken well to it.”

A lot of you have mentioned the burden of producing all the worksheets in colour. We’re looking into ways we can reduce that.

We will soon be contacting volunteers about doing some short interviews about your experiences with Code Club. Once we’ve looked at the data in detail we’ll tell you more about what’s been happening.

It’s really great to hear your stories and feedback, whether through the survey, by direct email, or through avenues like Twitter. It means we can change the way Code Club works to suit the people we created it for.